Halo: Avenger's Reckoning
Once upon a time in a far away land, there lived a dog. He had no master, no home, no pack or family to belong to. Ragged and abandoned, he wandered here and there in search of a place to call his own. But no one wanted him, and they always turned him back out into the streets. He was a stray. The dog was small and lean and ugly. He had nothing to live for, yet still he clung to life. A gnawing hunger followed him wherever he went, always reminding him of the sufferings of the past and the things denied to him. The hunger drove him onwards and gave him the will to survive, for in his heart the dog's deepest desire to find a way to sate the endless hunger. Time and time again he came within reach of his goal, but every time it would be snatched away and he was always left with even less than what he had had to begin with. Defeat after defeat beat the dog down, but he was never broken. Nothing could break him, because was already broken. So he staggered on and on, always suffering but never submitting. Loneliness and fear ate away at him, but there was also anger rising up within him. And when the anger met the hunger, he realized things would only be this way as long as he let himself be kicked and cursed and driven out. And so the dog decided to stop being a stray. Instead, the dog decided to become a wolf. But the anger and hunger and loneliness and fear would not go away. The new wolf needed something to hunt. He needed prey. And soon he found another creature more than happy to provide it. ** In another part of the world lived a panther, a creature who had dwelt in the shadows since it was a young cub. The darkness was its ally, and when the dog-turned-wolf slipped into its domain the panther recognized it for what it was at once. For the panther had also lived a life of pain and grief. Like dog, it knew the pain of loss and defeat and like the dog it was plagued by an endless hunger. But a pitiful quest for solace was not the panther's dream, for he was not alone. A black beast of vengeance thrashed about within the panther, thriving on his pain and always urging him onwards. Kill, kill, it would tell him. Kill the enemies of your friends. Make them suffer the way you suffered. And so the panther and his beast carried on, for their enemies were many and strong. But revenge was simply a single step in the panther's journey, for his dreams stretched far further than the enemies who had caused him grief. The panther dreamed of the future, a future that he would sacrifice his very soul to create. He gathered others around himself in the darkness and waited for the moment to strike. He witnessed the dog become a wolf, and in that instant their fates were entwined. They were both creatures molded in the darkness, and now their goals were the same. The new wolf was only a novice in the field of rage and hate, but the panther gathered him up and set his paws upon a new path. Now the wolf had prey and the panther was ready to seize his hour. Their journeys had been long. Their battles would be fierce. The wolf and the panther set off for war. The day of reckoning was at hand. Halo: Avenger's Reckoning Prologue: One With the Darkness His body shuddered and convulsed as jolts of pain tore through his muscles. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. The bare skin scraped raw against the cold floor; he threw his weight on his arms as he gagged back a wave of bile. The pain was all around him. He had nowhere to run, no place to escape the sheer agony that seemed to be ripping him apart from within. The bloody legs came back up, trembling, as he struggled to rise. His head swam from the pain. His left eye felt as if it were about to explode. A fit of coughing nearly knocked him back down, but he threw a hand out and caught himself against the wall. He leaned in place, gasping for breath in between pained whimpers. "You are not resisting the effects," someone said from somewhere above. He didn't have the strength to look up at the speaker. "You must fight this stage on your own, or the stimulants will consume you." Worms. It felt as if there were worms all throughout his body, crawling through his veins in place of blood. His arms couldn't take much more of this. They would burst open, he was sure of it, and then all the worms would come spilling out onto the floor. "You must fight," another voice, deeper than the first, commanded. "We will contain you until your body stabilizes. You are its master, not the other way around. Contain it!" He'd been through this before. He tried to think back, recalling a scratchy bed, tubes sticking in him, this same ripping sensation in his arms and legs. There had been others, people just like him lying all around. The walls had been white, no, blue. Or had they been grey? His stomach lurched, and this time he couldn't hold it down. A wave of half-digested rations splattered on the floor. Warm bile struck his bare feet, but he didn't even have the energy to shy away in disgust. Through blurry eyes in dim light he saw that the grey-tinged puke was laced with bright streaks of red. Blood, he realized distantly. I'm puking up my own blood. "Good, good," the first voice said. "Purge yourself of nutrients. They might get in the way of the stimulants you received. The faster the takeover, the better." "Give your body rest," the second voice advised. "You do not need to resist the stimulants. You need only survive." Survive. The word stirred a new wave of resolve within him. He could do that. He had to do that. I can survive. That's what I do. Survive. His legs failed him again, and this time he didn't even try to catch himself. He collapsed face-first onto the ground. A foul warmth spread up the side of his body where he'd landed in the vomit, but right now all he wanted to do was sleep. His eyelids drooped, fluttered... No! He forced them open. He had to stay awake. He had to fight back. He had to survive. He sucked in deep breaths. His lungs burned like everything else, but he had to keep breathing. His head was full of voices, each one clamoring to be heard over the others. "Felix made me an offer..." "I can set you free from all this. If you work for the UNSC, I'll make sure you never want for anything again..." His body spasmed again and he cried out feebly. There was no reply. The room was getting darker, or maybe that was just his eye. No, eyes. He had two of them again now, right? "This is a second chance at life..." He tried to curl into a ball, but another wave of pain knocked his limbs back out. They splayed feebly out at all sides, unable to move even as fresh jolts ate their way through his body. Nothing to do but lie where he was and wait for it all to end. "The UNSC's shit's gonna hit the fan and splatter..." "We don't take jobs to fulfill some selfless cause..." "Freaky, there really was an attack in the back. I was just hoping they'd follow the barrage of people out the front and leave me alone..." He just had to keep breathing. That was all there was to it. Just keep breathing. Survive... This pain was necessary. He needed it. It was his friend. His ally. He needed to get stronger. He needed to fight, to hunt. But it hurt so much... He rolled over and tried to slip away inside himself. A better time, a happier time... The dim light brightened, the floor softened, and there was a warmth that ran through his body and chased away the pain. Someone's arm was on his shoulders. A gentle touch caressed his cheek. His eyes fluttered weakly as he stared up into someone's face. The light was too bright; he couldn't make out who it was. "Simon." His name, that was his name. Right? The voice was as familiar to him as the sound of his own, but he just couldn't reach far enough to know who it belonged to. There was tenderness there, tenderness laced with regret and... pity? His lips moved in answer, but no sound came out. He still couldn't make out the face. It loomed over him amid the brightness, radiating with beauty and power that defied his imagination. Who are you? "Mordred." This voice was different, less confident. The face hadn't changed, but the warmth was beginning to fade. His muscles began to burn once more. "Stray, I love you!" Twin gunshots tore him back into reality. The warmth, the light, the gentle touch all faded, leaving him alone in the darkness. He groaned feebly, thrashing from left to right as the agony returned. His left hand smacked the ground, its prosthetic metal fingers leaving grooves in the polished floor. "The UNSC, the rebels..." He could see a burning keep, its walls kept alight by the fires of his agony. Bodies were all around, warriors, females, children. He saw it all as if he had just seen it yesterday. A place of peace and tranquility burnt to ashes by the will of a single family. "The Vadams." "All the people who do things like this..." "Let me help you make them suffer..." That was right. He had a job to do. The roars of furious animals rang in his ears as they tore into rebel flesh. That had felt wonderful then; to do the same to the Vadams now would be just as sweet. And then he could rest. Then he would be free of it all. A weak smile slid over his face as he curled into a ball and let the pain wash over him. Simon, once SPARTAN-G294, once Stray, and now Mordred, fell back into the pain as the darkness closed in around him. Soon he'd be free... Part One: Kindling Fire Chapter One: Alien Guests Whenever Cassandra had heard stories about Sanghelios's red sky, she had always imagined a world locked in eternal sunset. She had envisioned everything as being tinted red, as if looked at through a color lens, from the grassy plains to the leaves on the trees. The image had struck her as incredibly depressing. But now that she could actually see it in person, she realized the stories couldn't do the sky justice at all. Yes, there was red here but she also saw swirling clouds of dusty yellow and even Earth-blue. The horizon was a constantly changing tapestry of color; sometimes she lost herself staring off into the distance for hours on end, immersed in the heavenly patterns before her. When Cyla told her that there were forms of poetry and dance dedicated to describing the changes of the sky, Cassandra believed her. Everything about Sanghelios looked as if it had been designed to inspire the arts. From the sky to the endless plains and towering mountains to the smooth contours of the keeps the Sangheili noble clans called their homes, Cassandra found beauty everywhere she looked. Many Sangheili warriors used the arts as a pastime to hone their skills, but she had a hard time understanding how such a dedicated warrior culture could have evolved on a place this wondrous in the first place. It still baffled her that two decades ago these aliens had wanted nothing more than to wipe her entire species off the face of the galaxy. She looked away from the clouds and back down towards the makeshift workbench she had created from a slab of wood and a trio of rocks. The Vadam keep did not want for more elaborate stations, but none of them were outside and as long as she was here Cassandra had decided to take in as much of Sanghelios's natural beauty as she could. Right now she was doing her work in one of the keep's gardens, a simple clearing surrounded by well-manicured trees. The contents of her medical bag were spread out across the board in front of her. Normally she ran inventory on it once a week, but after accepting supplies from the keep's quartermaster she had started doing it every day. There were no needlessly elaborate medicines or gadgets amongst the gear she'd gotten from the Sangheili, just variations on the splints and bandages that were standard issue in the UNSC. But she wasn't used to working with non-human gear and in the field that might be the difference between a patient's life or death. Besides, she needed to keep busy. When she wasn't checking her gear or admiring the planet around her, she found other things for herself to do. The Vadams had been shocked to find their small female guest working herself to the bone every morning pounding through exercise after exhaustive exercise. Since then the keep drill masters had started to use her as an example for their pupils to follow. She needed to keep busy, because otherwise she might start to think again. And if she started to think she would have to remember everything that had happened to her over the past two months. New Madrigal, the UNSC, David Kahn, the Incumbent Wrath... and Simon. Cassandra fought back the lump that formed in the back of her throat and set about checking her medical supplies with renewed vigor. Pausing to take a breath, she pulled her shoulder-length hair back and tied it behind her head. Work. She needed to focus on work. She checked a roll of UNSC-issue gauze, then compared it to a similar canister of Sangheili bandages. The small brown tube, no larger than a roll of toothpaste, somehow managed to contain twice the length of fabric that her regular one did. She had been amazed the first time she'd inspected it and found that it was several times more sturdy than the human make. She guessed that the warriors used their energy gauntlets to cut it in the field, because it had taken her a minute of sawing with a freshly-sharpened combat knife before she could hack a length for herself off. She'd need to figure out a way around that. Bleeding patients couldn't wait a minute for her to tear off bandages for them. Moving on to the set of splints, she busied herself comparing the lengths of the two models. She was halfway through trying to decide if she could use the Sangheili-issue ones for treating Spartans when a faint rustling off at the edge of the garden. She turned to see a female Sangheili in lightly-patterend robes making her way across the grass. Cassandra was still working on telling each of the aliens apart form each other, but this one at least she knew at once as Cyla 'Cazal. The Vadam Keep's mistress stopped a few paces away and spread her mandibles in what Cassandra was coming to understand as a smile. She would never find the Sangheili beautiful, but she couldn't muster up the same revulsion that many humans did when they looked at their former enemies. "Cassandra," Cyla said warmly. Cassandra had picked up bits and pieces of Sangheili dialect in her time running underground med clinics on the frontier, but she needed to rely on the small translator device embedded in her ear to make out what her host was saying. "You have been here all afternoon." "I like it here," Cassandra pointed out. "And my gear needs to be in order today. We'll be having visitors." Cyla nodded, though her eyes told Cassandra that she didn't like the idea of human soldiers setting foot anywhere near her keep. The Vadams had gone to great lengths to keep their keep hidden from their many enemies; Autel 'Vadam had needed to argue long and hard with his clan mates before Cassandra had been allowed refuge within the keep's walls. "Yes, the inspection. Autel warned me." Cassandra nodded apologetically but didn't know whether to apologize or not. The Sangheili seemed to have protocol for every occasion. Cassandra hadn't gotten around to figuring out how to reassure a worried keep mistress yet. Just thinking about protocol made her realize that she was still sitting in front of Cyla. Once again, she didn't know if this was rude or not. It was enough to give her a headache, but she stood and brushed blades of grass from her jumpsuit's pant legs. Cyla had been incredibly accommodating since she had arrived here, taking time out of her schedule to talk to her about all sorts of things whenever the opportunity arose. There was no reason she couldn't try to be civil. Cyla looked around the garden. "You are here," she noted. "But where is your friend? I have not seen her since this morning." "Oh, Nimue?" Cassandra shrugged. "She came in here with me. But I haven't seen her for a while either." As if on cue, some leaves rustled behind them. Cassandra and Cyla turned to see a small figure drop from one of the tallest trees in the garden. She landed on all fours, catlike, and glanced up at them through intense brown eyes. "You wanted me?" she asked. Someone who didn't know her might have decided that Nimue was being impudent, but Cassandra knew better. Her friend had probably managed to track every person in the keep from her perch up there. Maybe she'd even been shifting from tree to tree; the way she moved, Cassandra would never have known. A month ago, this sort of thing would have frightened Cyla out of her skin. By now, though, she was more than used to it. Nimue had a penchant for finding her way into places that everyone else considered out of reach. Be they high towers or locked armories, Nimue managed to slip in and out of them effortlessly, only being detected when she wanted to be. It was as if she'd made it her personal mission to memorize the layout of the keep inside and out. The girl got to her feet and brushed a lock of dark hair from her face. Like Cassandra, she chose to wear a dark human-style jumpsuit rather than the robes the Vadams had offered her. When neither Cassandra or Cyla said anything, she shrugged and vanished back up the tree as quickly as she had come down. Within moments Cassandra had lost her completely. "She is a strange one," Cyla admitted. "Is she... like you?" "Something like that," Cassandra replied. "Something like that." But that was a lie. Nimue was nothing like Cassandra or any of the other Spartans. They had all spent at least a little time as civilians with regular lives before the Office of Naval Intelligence had turned them into regimented, military commandos. Nimue's whole life had been spent in training to be something completely different. David Kahn, the deadliest mercenary the galaxy's underworld had ever known, had raised her Nimue since childhood to be the perfect assassin. Cassandra still wasn't clear on the details, but even now at the age of thirteen her friend possessed the skillset of any one of ONI's wetwork agents. When she tracked the Vadam keep's residents and crept through locked rooms, it was not a simple matter of showing off. Nimue had quite literally killed every Sangheili in the keep in her head a dozen times over since she'd arrived. Cassandra had seen some improvement in the girl's social abilities since they'd become friends, but a month ago Nimue had watched David Kahn, the man who'd been her entire universe, perish on the end of a Sangheili energy sword. Since then she'd done next to nothing but exercise and polish her skills, keeping to herself as much as possible outside of meal times. Sometimes she'd vanish for days on end, only to reappear again as if she'd never been gone. It was unnatural, but what could Cassandra expect from a girl who had quite literally been raised in a bunker? "It just takes some getting used to," Cassandra explained to the bemused Cyla. "She's had a rough time of things." "So it would seem," Cyla sighed. She started off towards another end of the garden and Cassandra felt inclined to follow. "I can try to get her to stop if she's being a pain," Cassandra said apologetically, trailing after her host. "It can't be easy on your servants, having her popping up everywhere." "No," Cyla assured her. "It has been hard on some nerves, but for the most part it amuses them. The idea that a human child can slip by our guards unnoticed has encouraged our drill masters to keep a closer watch for any real threats that might strike this keep." "You've had problems like that in the past, haven't you?" Cassandra asked. "Autel... I mean, your husband told me the Fallen got in here once." Cyla let out another sigh, and Cassandra almost regretted bringing it up. It was another thing that clung to her mind since she'd arrived here. The Fallen might be gone, but she could never forget all the times their warriors had harassed her med clinic on the colony Tranquil Harmony. The idea of them setting foot in this place unnerved her. "Yes, they came here," the Sangheili admitted. "They took our children, our newborns. It was all apart of some scheme to turn us against your kind. Had you humans not lent us your aid..." She shook her head. "I doubt I would ever have seen my children again. I do not understand the things that drive some of us to behave so hideously towards each other. The end of the Great War was supposed to bring peace, but some warriors do not seem to be content unless there is some fight for them to wage." "It's the same with us humans," Cassandra said. She remembered the Humanity Liberation Front, whose commandos had infiltrated Sanghelios and indiscriminately butchered every population center they could find. She had been part of the operation that had wiped them out, though she'd been a prisoner at the time. A prisoner meant to get leverage over... She turned away, trying to ignore the memories before they came. She was so focused on staving off grief that she nearly tripped over the young Sangheili who had appeared behind her. She stumbled backwards as the female looked up at her with interest. Cassandra was immediately drawn to the girl's eyes: they were odd, even for a Sangheili. White pupils flaked with red peered out at the world, taking everything in and appearing to miss nothing. The girl wore loose, featureless robes and nearly came up to Cassandra's neck. "Vena," Cyla said. She sounded more amused than surprised. "I didn't notice you there." "I only just arrived, mother," the young Sangheili replied. Even through the translator her words sounded clipped and oddly mature for one her age. Cassandra found her eerily similar to Nimue. "I wanted to see the humans." Cassandra shot Cyla a questioning look. She had seen a few children around the keep, but they had all been male. The way she understood it, the Sangheili sent their females off to the country and cities to be educated while the males trained to be warriors in the keeps. "Vena has been away studying," Cyla told her, indicating her daughter. Vena bowed politely. "She arrived here this morning to visit the keep. She will be staying with us for some time before she returns to her studies." "Oh," Cassandra said, nodding and doing her best to hide her apprehension about her host's daughter. "Nice to meet you, Vena." "And you, healer. You are a long way from your home and friends here." "What a creepy kid." Cassandra jerked her head, heart racing. For a moment she could have sworn she heard Simon's voice speaking beside her, but there was no one with her besides Cyla and Vena. But that's what he would have said, even if he was a guest. If he were here. Cyla must have seen the pain that flickered across her face and mistaken it for something else. "Vena is quite mature for her age," she explained. "But she has more experience with humans than others." "Don't worry," Cassandra replied, keeping her voice level. "I know humans just like her." Vena cocked her head. "Such as the one sitting in the branches above us right now?" None of them had any time to look up. The leaves rustled, and then Nimue was landing nimbly between Cassandra and Vena. Cassandra saw her hand come up and cried out a warning, but it was too late. Nimue's fist shot towards Vena's throat. No one had any time to react. No one, that is, except for Vena. She twisted her head and let the blow whistle inches past her. Nimue instantly turned the fist into a knife-hand and slashed inwards, but this time Vena brought her arm up and batted it aside. Without even pausing, Nimue whipped up her foot and aimed a high kick at the Sangheili girl's face. Vena leapt back and caught the foot, twisting it to the side. Nimue began to fall, but then planted both hands in the grass and lashed out with her free leg. This time the kick struck home, the girl's foot planting itself firmly in Vena's gut. Cassandra could barely follow the exchange at the speed both girls moved. Nimue pulled her leg free and leapt to her feet as Vena staggered back and brought both hands up in a very familiar posture. Their fists and legs whirled, striking and blocking with incredible precision. Cassandra practically lost track of which was the Sangheili and which was human. Nimue and Vena blended together in an unbroken chain of attacks and counter attacks. Then they broke free of each other, leaping back but never losing track of each other's eyes. Nimue moved first, darting off to the side and into the bushes. Vena followed at once and the two of them vanished into the shadows. Cassandra blinked at the spot where Vena and Nimue had been standing a second before. Cyla also seemed to break out of the trance that had held them both in check since the fight had erupted. She suddenly realized just how awkward this was. It was like the time on Onyx where Ralph had led Team Jian in setting off a small grenade in the latrines while she and Team Kopis were using them. Jian had run off, leaving Kopis holding the bag when the drill instructors arrived. "Um." Cassandra rubbed the back of her neck. "I can try to get them back." Cyla seemed rattled, but not at all as panicked as she should have been under the circumstances. "Do not bother," she replied, shaking her head. "I saw the attacks they used. Neither sought to do serious harm." Cassandra blinked at the keep mistress. She read their moves? This was getting even more bizarre by the second. She remembered something she had noticed about Vena during the fight. "Those moves Vena used," she said slowly. "I don't know how Sangheili do unarmed fighting, but she was using human-style martial arts. The kind they taught people like me." There was a pause before Cyla answered. The silence told Cassandra more than her host ever could. "Human self-defence techniques have been incorporated into her daily regimen," Cyla said carefully. "The school she studies with is very progressive." "Oh," Cassandra said with a nod. For now at least she would play along, but there was more going on here than just advanced defense techniques. Vena had managed to fend off an attack from someone who had been augmented and trained to dominate any opponent at such close range fighting. But right now Cassandra was just grateful that Cyla hadn't panicked when Nimue had gone after her daughter. She was scanning the garden for any sign of the girls when a familiar whine filled the air. Even after all this time, the sound of Banshees and a Phantom dropship sent a shiver down her spine. She reached for a sidearm that wasn't there before calming her nerves and clasping her hands tightly behind her back. "It's time to go," Cyla observed. "Your inspection team has arrived." Cassandra gulped, all thoughts of Nimue and Vena forgotten. No matter where she went, it seemed the UNSC always found a way to pay social calls. Chapter Two: Gathering Darkness